


An Unexpected Letter

by localfreak



Category: Green Knowe Series - L. M. Boston
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-03-03
Updated: 2012-03-03
Packaged: 2017-11-01 01:19:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 822
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/350402
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/localfreak/pseuds/localfreak
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Written for the Twelve Days of Christmas Challenge 2009-10. Grandmother Linnet Oldknowe recieves a letter from her Grandson, regarding the summer plans of his son, Toseland.</p>
            </blockquote>





	An Unexpected Letter

**Author's Note:**

> Additional notes: It has come to my attention some of my fic has been uploaded to a website I do not trust. I would like to make it abundantly clear I do not give permission for my work to be shared on any other website (linking to my fic's URL is fine), or uploaded anywhere without my knowledge and expressed permission. Quite frankly, if I want to upload it somewhere I'll do it myself.

“Was that the post?” asked Linnet. “I thought I heard Boggis.”

“Well don’t bother the other Linnet whilst she’s reading, you know she needs to concentrate.” Alexander told her, but Linnet was off before he could finish. She skipped into the room as gaily as a summer’s breeze, wafting the paper and opened envelopes from the kitchen table.

“Not now, please Linnet.” Grandmother Oldknowe sighed. 

“Bills? Silly Billys?”

Grandmother laughed, looking at the young girl out of the corner of one eye. “No bills today, thank goodness, but be a dear and go outside and play with the birds. It seems I’ve a very tricky choice to make.”

“Toby could help you.” Linnet protested, but skipped away into the air as swiftly as she came.

The Other Linnet sighed and took off her reading glasses. She had just received a distinctly worrisome letter from her grandson. Dear Alexander, how she doted upon him, particularly since his brother’s death so many years before, if only his wife hadn’t been taken from him so young. She hadn’t met his new one, nor her sweet little great grandson, Toseland.

_Though Edie loves her ‘Toto’ as she calls him, I do feel that she struggles to keep him with me away with the regiment, and he is still shy and awkward around her, no matter how I implore him not to be._

Other Linnet snorted. ‘Edie’, as Alexander called her, didn’t sound like the motherly type with all those parties they seemed to attend, and by the sound of it the poor lad hadn’t taken to her any easier than she to him. What woman would want the remnants of her husband’s previous marriage reminding her at every turn that compared to Mary, she would always be second best? It would take a stronger woman than this Edie sounded to be. And Toto! A perfectly ridiculous nickname! Linnet hoped they boy wasn’t as insipid as the name suggested.

 _He spent last summer hols with the school vicar and his wife but I don’t feel I can take advantage of them again, no matter how glowingly they reported his behaviour. He is a good boy, not prone to noise or fuss and I expect he’d be willing to give you a hand around the old place. No doubt he’d find it all a great adventure the way Toby and I did when we came to visit as boys! It would certainly be good for him, I feel, to understand more of his family and his roots._  
Leaving him with the vicar and his wife like an unwanted sack of flour! Linnet felt a burst of compassion for the boy, for surely he must feel how unwanted he was, for his own father and stepmother to leave him at school and not have him home for every holiday. 

Now, now. She chided herself, clucking under her breath. It didn’t do to think so ill of people, let alone her own flesh and blood. Alexander was a busy man, not given to understanding how to look after a small boy, that was a mother’s job, but this poor Toseland’s mother was dead, and, it seemed, her replacement not up to much.

But was she too old for such things? She would be the child’s great grandmother, practically as old as Methuselah to a small boy. She knew her grandson had extolled his sons’ quiet nature as a virtue to tempt her further, but it struck her somehow as wrong. If the boy were to come, it would be in his nature to run about and shout and play, not creep around in the shadows running after an old lady such as her.

He would like to play on the rocking horse, she fancied, all Oldknowe men had a passion for horses, since long before Toby ever had his Feste. She could hear the children laughing now as the birds came to feed on the crumbs she had thrown out that morning. The sun was bright today, although the warm weather was not yet upon them.

Linnet laughed to herself, of course the boy must come. He was a Toseland- a new Toseland- and this was his home and his birthright. Any fears about her age she would put aside, the boy belonged with the others. 

She wondered how they would take to him.

“How we would take to who?” asked Linnet, suddenly at her elbow.

“A little boy is coming to stay soon.”

“A boy? One of the Boggis’?”

“No, another Toseland.”

“Oh how wonderful!” Linnet clapped her hands happily, “Is he a Toby or a Tolly?”

Linnet smiled as she thought of her own son, Alexander’s father, her Toby with his quick smile. 

“I don’t know yet, Linnet. We must wait until he comes.”

“Wait and See!” Linnet sang happily and upstairs, by the fireplace in the children’s room, the two china dogs wagged their tails in excitement.


End file.
